PRAGMATISM. - A trend in contemporary philosophy, one of the most successful and widespread, which has had extensive and at times profound repercussions, not only in the field of philosophy proper, but also in science, pedagogy, psychology, and even religion (see the relevant entries). It is not to be identified with the so-called "philosophy of action," though it is certainly one of its most significant aspects. The latter includes other doctrines—notably Olle Laprune’s "doctrine of moral certainty" or Blondel’s "integral realism" (q.v.)—which are not reducible to pragmatism itself, just as modernism (q.v.) is not, even though in some of its representatives, such as Le Roy, the influence of pragmatism is significant. Apart from the so-called religious pragmatism (for which see MODERNISM) and other forms of "philosophy of action," such as that of Unamuno (q.v.), pragmatism itself comprises several currents: a) logical and epistemological pragmatism (Peirce, Vailati); b) empirical-spiritualistic pragmatism (James); c) humanistic pragmatism (Schiller); d) fictionalistic pragmatism (Vaihinger); e) instrumentalist pragmatism (Dewey).
The first (and pragmatism in general) may be considered to have been founded by the American scientist C. S. Peirce, whose essay *How to Make Our Ideas Clear* (1878) is regarded as the manifesto of the new philosophy. For Peirce, the meaning of a concept lies in its practical consequences; that is, to determine which universal notions are real, one need only apply the pragmatic criterion of considering what practical effects the object of our conception produces. The meaning of every assertion we make lies in the future, and thus the entire positive sense of our ideas resides in their practical consequences. When new ideas do not produce differences in the practical outcomes of thought, they are merely different ways of saying the same thing.
The method of pragmatism is followed by Italian pragmatists such as G. Vailati (q.v.) and M. Calderoni, who, especially the former, sought to remain logicians, unlike James, who declared (*A Pluralistic Universe*, New York 1909, p. 214) that he was "abandoning logic frankly, resolutely, irrevocably." Vailati placed great importance on the study of the structure and development of language (q.v.) and on the nature of the functions it performs, convinced that clarifying terms eliminates illusory conflicts and even the illusion of those who believe they are saying something when they are not (Scritti, Florence 1911, pp. 895 ff.). Thus, the best "methodological canon" to avoid the ambiguities of language and the use of meaningless words is "that which advises determining the meaning of every abstract phrase or proposition by examining the consequences it entails and the applications made of it by those who enunciate it, considering two phrases or propositions equivalent, or as two ways of saying the same thing (Peirce), whenever those who adopt them use them as means to reach the same particular conclusions" (ibid., p. 702). For both Vailati and Calderoni, the Peircean formula—the meaning of a conception consists in its practical consequences—is not to be understood in a utilitarian or subjectivist sense. Pragmatism is "utilitarian" only "insofar as it leads to discarding a certain number of useless, i.e., merely apparent, questions" (ibid., p. 121). Their formula is nothing more than an invitation to introduce "experimentalism not only in the solution but also in the selection of the questions to be addressed; to infuse into words, which are the object of our controversies, their practical and experimental content, so as to avoid confusion and empty talk" (Calderoni, Scritti, I, Florence 1924, p. 217). For both Vailati and Calderoni, experience is not only a means of testing assertions and theories but above all a criterion of their meaning, that is, a criterion for selecting and eliminating the questions raised by the assertions themselves. For Mario M. Rossi, whose early thought was inspired by pragmatism, prediction is in itself not only a criterion of meaning but also of truth (Saggio sul rimorso, Turin 1933, p. 1).
The term *pragmatism*, used by Peirce, was taken up, along with other theses, in 1898 by W. James (q.v.) in a lecture at the University of California. Yet while pragmatism under James became a movement of worldwide influence and importance, it took on an empirical-spiritualistic orientation that was no longer that of Peirce. James’s "radical empiricism" (as he called his philosophy) is quite distinct from the classical empiricism of the English tradition. The experience of which the American philosopher speaks is future-oriented, a test and verification of knowledge. Choosing means in view of an end is the hallmark of intelligent procedure, distinguishing it from mechanical procedure, which neither selects means nor pursues ends: "to pursue future ends and choose means for their attainment is the mark and criterion for affirming that mentality is present in a phenomenon" (*The Principles of Psychology*, I, New York 1890, p. 8). Thus, volitional activity dominates rational and sensory activity: perception (q.v.) and thought (q.v.) exist solely in view of conduct. Both science and philosophy are constructed with a view to human ends; they serve (and this is the purpose of thought) action, so that man may operate effectively in the world. Hence James’s defense of moral and religious "beliefs" (when they are of a kind that cannot be proven true or false and are "alive" and "important") as useful and necessary for effective action. Such beliefs are accepted as true, and thus the risk of error is incurred, but this risk is unavoidable, for even those who refuse to believe assume the risk of a negative decision. It is better, then, to accept responsibility and risk, to assume the "perhaps," to choose, to will to believe (as in the title of James’s famous work, *The Will to Believe*). In this way, James believed he could safeguard and guarantee moral and religious exigencies, give his pragmatism the character of a "will to believe," and found upon it his pluralistic conception of the universe, of which God is one of many finite beings, existing in time, "making his own history as we do" and among us (*A Pluralistic Universe*, New York 1909, p. 319). How such a God could satisfy the exigencies of religious consciousness and guarantee an order of truth in the human and physical world remains incomprehensible and thus an ineffective belief, one devoid even of pragmatic value.
It does not seem accurate to say that the Englishman F. C. S. Schiller, by returning more faithfully than James to Peirce, brought pragmatism back within the boundaries of logic and gnoseology; rather, it must be said that he understands logic in a manner very close to Jamesian pragmatism. Since he derives every thought or logical process from the needs, feelings, beliefs, and passions of the human soul, his can be described as humanistic pragmatism, for which everything is conditioned by the demands of action or practical need. In short, truth—and every truth—is relative to man. His critique of formal logic, which he regards as a mere game of the intellect and a pleasant pastime (*Formal Logic*, 2nd ed., London 1931, p. 388), and his reduction of any principle that does not obey a practical interest to a verbal proposition, lead Schiller to accept utility as the only valid criterion and to measure by it the degree of truth in the sciences, mathematics, philosophy, and so on. In this sense, Schiller considers the ancient saying of Protagoras—“man is the measure of all things”—as the greatest discovery of philosophy, without this justifying the use of fictions, errors, and lies, which may still be useful to someone. According to Schiller, there is a kind of selective principle by which the individual, in the course of life, tends to abandon some initial interests and choose others that are more consistent and truer. Social action influences this choice: of the various choices, always made on the basis of the evaluative principle of utility, only those survive that have social utility and better respond to the aspirations of the greatest number of people in a given historical condition. Schiller’s humanistic pragmatism is a form of subjectivism (v.) and culminates in radical relativism (v.).
The two forms of pragmatism espoused by James and Schiller influenced some Italian writers who, from 1903 to 1907, gave rise to the *Leonardo* movement, particularly G. Papini (closer to James) and G. Prezzolini (closer to Schiller). The journal also counted Vailati and Calderoni among its contributors and thus, in its best and least passionately polemical pages, represented the three forms of pragmatism—those of Peirce, James, and Schiller—with open dissent between Vailati-Calderoni on one side and Papini-Prezzolini on the other. The latter two writers, in the end, shaped the character of the journal, giving it a polemical, more critical than constructive, character aimed at revitalizing culture and philosophy. According to Papini, the fundamental trait of pragmatism is the “relaxation of theories and beliefs,” that is, the recognition of their purely instrumental value; in other words, they are valid only relative to an end or a set of ends and are therefore subject to change, alteration, and transformation as needed (*P.*, Florence 1927, p. 91).
James’s pragmatism found an original and philosophically developed expression in Italy in the “spiritualism” of A. Aliotta, though his thought, having passed through various phases, was also influenced by other currents. Humanistic pragmatism, on the other hand, had its representatives in Italy even before Schiller, in G. Cesca and P. R. Troiano. The former, starting from a strictly empiricist and phenomenalist standpoint, limits the beginning and end of human activity to the external world, understood as phenomenon (v.), which, in creating civilization, frees itself from the “illusion” of the Absolute (v.) while creating the *regnum hominis*, the incessant product of the transforming action of the external environment in accordance with human needs (*La filosofia dell’azione*, Palermo 1908, p. 23). The latter, though he does not wish his “humanism” to be confused with pragmatism or voluntarism (v.), ultimately accepts the pragmatic principle of knowledge as a means of transforming reality for our practical ends and the consequent utilitarianism (v.), which is realized in a state of “calm” (freedom from pleasure and pain) or *alivia* (*Le basi dell’umanesimo*, Turin 1907, p. 130).
H. VAIHINGER, HANS (v.) developed his own personal form of pragmatism Kant (v.), Lange (v.), Mach’s empiriocriticism (v.), AVE MARIA (v.), Nietzsche (v.). Vaihinger also subordinates thought to action but does not identify truth with utility: even contradictory and erroneous beliefs can be useful. Only pure experience is true, but man is not satisfied with it and thus creates fictions (immortality of the soul, freedom, God, etc.), which are useful for practical life and give him the illusion of satisfying his deepest needs. Vaihinger exaggerates Kantian agnosticism regarding the “ideas” of pure reason, to which he denies any cognitive value and grants only a regulative one. There is, however, a difference: for Kant, man must act *as if* the soul were immortal, etc.; for Vaihinger, these beliefs are “fictions,” and man acts *as if* the fictions he has created were realities. According to this philosophy of the “as if” (*Philosophie des Als-Ob*), the title of Vaihinger’s most significant work, the starting point is neither truth nor hypothesis; gaining ever greater awareness of this is the progress of philosophy: to be conscious that fictions are fictions and yet to use them for the purposes of life. This is ultimately an absurd position, since a fiction, myth, or illusion, once recognized as such, can have no attractive or stimulating force. As a fiction, it has no cognitive or even pragmatic value.
Before Vaihinger, but under more direct positivist (v.) influence and with greater adherence to Kantian positions, the Italian G. Marchesini had argued that moral and religious ideals are nothing but “fictions.” He emphasized their social importance: “Act as if what is socially true and socially established as absolute were also true and absolute for you” (*Le finzioni dell’anima*, Bari 1905, p. 197; Vaihinger’s cited work is from 1911). Marchesini attributes to fiction a psychological force of efficacy indispensable in moral conduct, but, more consistently than Vaihinger, he grants it this force only insofar as it is believed to be a truth corresponding to a reality.
The “instrumentalism” (v.) of the American J. Dewey is the most influential and debated form of pragmatism today. For Dewey, too, the starting point is experience, but primitive and integral experience, which is also error and perversity, ignorance and risk. There is an indissoluble connection between nature and man: man is part of nature and feels rooted in it, but he is that part of nature destined to modify its structure and realize its meaning. Thus, ideas and thought in general are instruments for organizing future experience, and reason necessarily has a constructive function (*Philosophy and Civilization*, New York 1931, p. 25). Convincing oneself that error, evil, disorder, the irrational, and death are realities (rather than illusions) and striving to reduce their effects and limit their scope is the task of man and human society, gradually (though never completely) achieved through the active work of human intelligence, “valid within the limits of its success.” Every theory, doctrine, or mental construct is an effective way (when it is effective) for man to transform reality in order to secure and enjoy the goods he needs. Men think when stimulated by need and unease, when they must calm disturbances and overcome difficulties. “A life of rest, of effortless success, would be a life without thought” (*Ricostruzione filosofica*, Italian trans., Bari 1930, p. 138).
With Dewey, the [pragmatist] manifests one of its most dangerous aspects: it is no longer merely a question of subordinating thought to action, but rather: a) of eliminating any trace of spiritualism; b) of limiting the function of intelligence to its transformative efficacy upon reality (and upon any reality), thereby denying the existence of immutable essences, substances, or principles; c) with the aim of satisfying human needs and, with them, the inquietudes that stimulate him—these being real and effective insofar as they can be satisfied within the bounds of natural and historical order. The pragmatism of Dewey differs little from the fundamental theses of Marx and Marxism (v.); it may be said to be the "American" form of the latter, but the consequences, from a moral, religious, and philosophical standpoint, are identical. This explains the sympathies Dewey enjoys among certain European theoreticians or followers of Marxism. A grave observation, especially when one considers that the United States of America, in its anti-Marxist politics and economics, today regards Dewey as its official philosopher and national glory.
Yet the entire [pragmatist] system, apart from some contributions to problems of science, language, empirical psychology, and pedagogy, and aside from the merit of a vigorous appeal to concreteness, is a dangerous, erroneous, and philosophically vacuous orientation of thought, worn thin by an invincible internal contradiction: every moral, religious, scientific truth, etc., is provisional and contingent, and yet one must believe it to be true and necessary. Thus, on the one hand, it is acknowledged that truth, if not believed to be such, loses all pragmatic value; and on the other, that it is valid only for its pragmatic value. One of two things must be true: either truth has efficacy in action only insofar as it is and is believed to be truth, in which case it is recognized that it is not accepted as true for its practical consequences but because it is believed and is truth; or it is known that a principle is not truth and yet it is claimed that, despite this knowledge, it has practical efficacy—an assertion that is meaningless, since a principle known not to be true cannot exert any stimulus or have any efficacy. Pragmatism thus comes to recognize that the pragmatic criterion has no value as a criterion of truth; and in doing so, it negates itself.
In pragmatism converge Kantian postulates (devoid of their speculative significance), positivistic and empiricist tendencies (though of a positivism and empiricism that are now more critical and now more naive), along with other ideas suggested by the theory of evolution (v.) in its various developments, by some recent positions in the philosophy of science, and by the influence of scientific discoveries, which are arbitrarily and crudely applied at once to philosophical problems. All of this is marshaled in support of the pragmatic dogma that the truth of a principle (v.) or cognitive process is determined by its practical efficacy, i.e., by success—an assumption equivalent to taking the contingent and empirical, the temporal or the relative, as the criterion of truth. This represents the inversion of the classical criterion (v.) of truth, the negation of philosophy (G. Papini, op. cit., p. 81, writes that pragmatism “is less a philosophy than a method for dispensing with philosophy”), a form—sometimes extreme—of reducing truth to the status of a kind of “democratic” candidate on a list of putative truths, awaiting a majority of votes to be declared true or false; and the outcome depends on the efficacy of the staging and publicity. Pragmatism, in the end, denies all truth and resolves into a form of empirical historicism and, ultimately, of genuine materialism (v.); and,
when it is called religious and spiritualist, into a no less ruinous fideism (v.), a kind of mysticism of action and will that, unsupported by a firm rational principle or a well-founded concept of transcendence, drifts toward the most radical immanentism (v.) and thus toward a mysticism of the transformative and operative efficacy of man, aimed at establishing a future society ever more capable of satisfying his needs and enjoying the goods of the world; that is, it converges with Marxism.